Читать книгу American Civil War For Dummies - Keith D. Dickson - Страница 43

The 1856 presidential election is important because it revealed the realignment of national politics by region. Although the Republicans lost the election to Buchanan, the party dominated the North, with the exception of a few key states (Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Illinois, and Indiana). This win was to be the South’s last political victory. The growing power of the Republicans in the Northern states and the number of Republicans who would enter the House and Senate were frightening prospects for Southerners. Political power was clearly shifting to the North.

As time went on, the South found fewer and fewer options in the face of the Republicans’ open hostility to the expansion of slavery. Southerners believed that if slavery could not expand naturally, the South would then be hostage to the interests of the North. Many Southern leaders had called for leaving the Union, or secession, as the only hope for the future. A few Southern hotheads, soon called “fire-eaters,” had threatened this in 1850, but their arguments were discounted. As Republican power grew in the North after 1856, however, Southerners began to take the words of the fire-eaters more seriously.